How We Use Selective Attention to Filter Information and Focus

选择性注意是关注的过程a particular object in the environment for a certain period of time. Attention is a limited resource, so selective attention allows us to tune out unimportant details and focus on what matters. This differs frominattentional blindness, which is when you focus hard on one thing and fail to notice unexpected things entering your visual field

选择性注意是如何工作的？

At any given moment, we are subjected to a constant barrage of sensory information. The blare of a car horn from the street outside, the chatter of your friends, the click of the keys as you type a paper for school, the hum of the heater as it keeps your room warm on a brisk autumn day.

But in most cases, we don't pay attention to each and every one of thesesensory experiences. 相反，我们把注意力集中在环境中某些重要的元素上，而其他的东西则融入到背景中，或者完全不被注意地从我们身边经过。那么，我们究竟该如何决定关注什么，忽略什么呢？

想象一下，你在一家熙熙攘攘的餐厅为一个朋友举办聚会。多个对话，盘子和叉子的叮当声，还有许多其他的声音在争夺你的注意力。在所有这些噪音中，你发现自己能够把不相关的声音调出来，专注于晚餐伙伴分享的有趣故事。

How do you manage to ignore certain stimuli and concentrate on just one aspect of your environment? This is an example of selective attention. Because our ability to attend to the things around us is limited in terms of both capacity and duration, we have to be picky about the things we pay attention to.

"In order to sustain our attention to one event in everyday life, we must filter out other events," explains author Russell Revlin in his text认识：理论与实践. "We must be selective in our attention by focusing on some events to the detriment of others. This is because attention is a resource that needs to be distributed to those events that are important."

选择性视觉注意

There are two major models describing how visual attention works.

• 聚光灯下的模型: The "spotlight" model works much like it sounds—it proposes that visual attention works similar to that of a spotlight. Psychologist威廉·詹姆斯建议这个聚光灯包括一个焦点，在这个焦点中可以清楚地看到事物。围绕这个焦点的区域，也就是所谓的边缘，仍然可见，但看不清楚。最后，聚光灯边缘区域之外的区域称为边缘。
• Zoom-lens model: The second approach is known as the "zoom-lens" model. While it contains all the same elements of the spotlight model, it also suggests that we are able to increase or decrease the size of our focus much like the zoom lens of a camera. However, a larger focus area also results in slower-processing since it includes more information so the limited attentional resources must be distributed over a larger area.

Selective Auditory Attention

Some of the best-known experiments on auditory attention are those performed by psychologist Colin Cherry. Cherry investigated how people are able to track certain conversations while tuning others out, a phenomenon he referred to as the "cocktail party" effect.

In these experiments, two auditory messages were presented simultaneously with one presented to each ear. Cherry then asked participants to pay attention to a particular message, and then repeat back what they had heard. He discovered that the participants were able to easily pay attention to one message and repeat it, but when they were asked about the contents of the other message, they were unable to say anything about it.

Cherry found that when contents of the unattended message were suddenly switched (such as changing from English to German mid-message or suddenly playing backward) very few of the participants even noticed. Interestingly, if the speaker of the unattended message switched from male to female (or vice versa) or if the message was swapped with a 400-Hz tone, the participants always noticed the change.

Theories of Selective Attention

选择性注意的理论倾向于关注刺激信息何时被注意，无论是在过程的早期还是晚期。

Broadbent's Filter Model

One of the earliest theories of attention was Donald Broadbent's filter model. Building on the research conducted by Cherry, Broadbent used an information-processing metaphor to describe human attention. He suggested that our capacity to process information is limited in terms of capacity, and our selection of information to process takes place early on in theperceptual process.

In order to do this, we utilize a filter to determine which information to attend to. All stimuli are first processed based upon physical properties that include color, loudness, direction, and pitch. Our selective filters then allow for certain stimuli to pass through for further processing while other stimuli are rejected.

Treisman's Attenuation Theory

特雷斯曼认为，虽然布罗德本特的基本方法是正确的，但它未能解释人们仍然可以处理参与信息的含义这一事实。特雷斯曼提出，注意力的工作方式不是滤波器，而是利用衰减器，根据物理特性或意义识别刺激。

In experiments, Treisman demonstrated that participants were still able to identify the contents of an unattended message, indicating that they were able to process the meaning of both the attended and unattended messages.

Memory Selection Models

其他研究人员还认为,Broadbent的model was insufficient and that attention was not based solely on a stimulus's physical properties. The cocktail party effect serves as a prime example. Imagine that you are at a party and paying attention to the conversation among your group of friends.

Suddenly, you hear your name mentioned by a group of people nearby. Even though you were not attending to that conversation, a previously unattended stimulus immediately grabbed your attention based on meaning rather than physical properties.

According to the memory selection theory of attention, both attended and unattended messages pass through the initial filter and are then sorted at a second-stage based upon the actual meaning of the message's contents.

选择性注意的资源理论

最近的理论倾向于关注是一种有限的资源，以及这些资源是如何在相互竞争的信息源中分配的。这些理论提出，我们有固定数量的注意力，然后我们必须选择如何分配我们的注意力储备之间multiple tasksor events.

注意力资源理论被严重批评为过于宽泛和模糊。事实上，它在解释注意的各个方面可能并不独立，但它很好地补充了过滤理论，”罗伯特·斯特恩伯格在他的《认知心理学》一书中总结了选择性注意的不同理论。万博maxbetx官网登陆

“注意力的过滤和瓶颈理论似乎更适合用来比喻那些在注意力上不相容的竞争性任务，”他说对于解释复杂任务中注意力分散的现象，资源理论似乎是一个更好的隐喻。”

Observations

Several factors can influence selective attention in spoken messages. The location from where the sound originates can play a role. For example, you are probably more likely to pay attention to a conversation taking place right next to you rather than one several feet away.

心理学教授哈罗德·帕什勒在他的《注意万博maxbetx官网登陆力心理学》一书中指出，简单地将信息呈现给不同的耳朵并不会导致选择一条信息而不是另一条。这两条消息在时间上必须有某种程度的不重叠，以便有选择地关注其中一条消息而不是另一条消息。如前所述，沥青的变化也会影响选择性。

The number of auditory selections that must be tuned out in order to attend to one can make the process more difficult. Imagine that you are in a crowded room and many different conversations are taking place all around you.

进一步了解how attention works, some of the things you can do to improve your attention, and why we sometimes miss what is right in front of us.